Strength and Weaknesses of Ontological Argument

The Ontological tilt was, and still is, a hot-topic for debate among philosophers many famous philosophers have published criticisms of the theory including Immanuel Kant and St. Thomas Aquinas. This ostensibly raises questions regarding whether or non this course works.While there is no clear-cut answer to these questions, I personally believe that the negatives of this argument outweigh the positives, thereby making it a weak argument. The first published criticism of Anselms Ontological argumentation was from Gaunilo in his disc In Behalf of the Fool (making reference to the fool in the book of psalms who didnt believe in beau ideal).While Gaunilo was a firm believer in God (and was in fact a monk), he disagreed strongly with Anselms method for proving his existence. His problem is with the strand of Anselms argument which is put forward in Chapter Two of Proslogion.While Anselm claimed that the God, who is defined as blameless, essential exist because an existent God is better than a non-existent God meaning that if he didnt exist, he wouldnt be perfect and therefore, wouldnt be God, Gaunilo applied this logic to the pillow slip of a Perfect Island.If the perfect Island didnt exist in the real world, it would be a contradiction in terms to call it the perfect Island. By this logic, the perfect Island must exist seeing as if it didnt exist, it wouldnt be perfect1. We obviously live that the Perfect Island does not in fact exist and, by Gaunilos reasoning, Anselms argument doesnt work if it doesnt work with parallel arguments, it doesnt work in the example of God. This criticism is very astute and, therefore, soberly weakens the argument and its effectiveness.However, Anselm directly responded to his contemporary Gaunilos criticism in an attempt to defend his argument and its ideals. Firstly, Anselm pointed out the fact the example of the Island (or any other examples for that matter) do not work because it, unlike God, is contingent and not at al l necessary its existence relies on the Earth and the Sea and it would have been entirely practicable for it never to have existed. God, however, must exist and depends on the existence of nothing else.Moreover, Anselm goes on to say that the perfect Island is impossible to define will it become more(prenominal) perfect as it gets bigger? God, however, is specifically defined by Anselm allowing the Ontological Argument to be applicable to him.This response deals with the criticism well and manages to re-strengthen the Ontological Argument to some degree. Another philosopher who disagreed with Anselms Ontological Argument was St. Thomas Aquinas. Again, he believed in God but disagreed with Anselms argument proving his existence.Aquinas raises questions about Gods self-evident existence. He claims that things can be self-evident in two ways in itself and both in itself and to us even though something whitethorn exist self-evidently in itself, this self-evidence may not be known to u s as humans and therefore, its existence would not be self-evident to us.This is barely what Aquinas proposes God to be. God is self-evident in himself because he is his own essence. However, seeing as this essence is unknown to us (as we do not know enough about him), the statement God exists is not self-evident to us.This, again, is another criticism which holds weight against the Ontological Argument, bring outing a glaring weakness in its logic. A third philosopher who published a criticism on the Ontological Argument (though in this case it was directed towards Descartes version of the argument which was published some(prenominal) centuries after Anselms in 1641) was Pierre Gassendi. In Descartes version of the Ontological Argument published in his Meditations, he claimed that God was entirely perfect and, as a result, must possess every possible perfection including the perfection of existence.Gassendi believed that this logic didnt work because if a thing doesnt exist, it is neither perfect nor imperfect it merely doesnt exist. Therefore, if God doesnt exist, this logic could not possibly be applied to him in an attempt to prove his existence.Descartes published a response to this criticism. In this response, he claimed that God could not be compared to anything else, proposing that the relationship and essence is manifestly quite different in the case of God from what it is in the case of a triangle it is a part of Gods essence to exist.While this does respond directly to Gassendis criticism, it does not particularly strengthen the argument seeing as Descartes gives no reason as to why Gods existence is a part of his essence he merely states that it is true. as yet another philosopher who published a criticism of the Ontological Argument was Immanuel Kant.Kant (who was an atheist) published a book called A Critique of Pure Reason in which he attempted to contradict both Descartes and Anselms versions of the Ontological Argument in two different wa ys.In his first argument, Kant begins by hypothetically accepting that existing is and so a specify predicate of God (which both Descartes and Anselm claim it is). He then goes on to argue that, even if this were true, there would be no contradiction in altogether rejecting the concept of God.For example, you may understand that having a single horn on its head is a defining predicate of a unicorn. However, this does not mean that it would be contradictory to not believe in unicorns or magical horses with horns.By this logic, you could also claim that you agree that if God did indeed exist, he would needs exist but that you do not believe in God or his necessity without contradicting yourself. In Kants second argument, he attacks the Ontological Argument at its base by claiming that existing could not possibly be considered as a defining predicate as it does nothing to change the comment of the being in question two people one of whom believes in unicorns and one who doesnt wo uld most likely share the same idea of what a unicorn is.While these two people would disagree on whether or not unicorns were real, they would not disagree on what a unicorn was. Therefore, it is impossible to say that existing is a defining predicate of God because it adds nothing to the definition of God.Overall, therefore, while the Ontological Argument is by all means a sound theory to some degree, the criticisms which highlight so many of the arguments weaknesses show how the theory is weaker than in it is strong.